MATH 101 CALCULUS – FALL 2022 – Worksheet 17

I1: Introduction to Integrals

Through this worksheet you will learn
 why do we need integrals
 what is the real meaning of integrals

Integrals arise from questions similar to the following problems:

1) The instantaneous velocity of an object is v (t) m/s. How long is the distance that object
has traveled from t=a to t=b ?
2) How do we compute the length of a curve which is not straight? How do we compute the
area/volume of a general object?
3) Oil is leaking out of a ruptured tanker at a rate of r(t) litters per minute. How much oil
have we lost after 30 minutes?
4) For a factory producing a certain product, the marginal cost function is MC (Q). This is
the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented or
the cost of producing additional quantity. How do we compute the extra cost when we
decide to produce 1000 instead of 100 products? Note that the cost per product is not
the same when comparing manufacturing a few products vs manufacturing many
products.
5) How do we compute the weight of an object knowing the density function? How do we
compute the electric charge of an object knowing the charge density function?

Q1. Do you recognize anything in common in the problems above (discuss with your friends or
skip after 1 minute)

Q2. Now let us look at problem 1). Can you answer the question if:

i) the velocity is a constant, v (t)=c?

j) the velocity only changes after 1s or a fixed amount of time?

(Try to answer on your own first before verifying your ideas with the illustrations on next page.)

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MATH 101 CALCULUS – FALL 2022 – Worksheet 17

Requiring the velocity can only change after a fixed amount of time is unrealistic (think of when
you drive a motorbike or a bike). In reality, the velocity usually changes smoothly.

If ∆ t is a very small change in time, we can assume that the velocity stays the same in the time
interval from t to t+ ∆ t . The distance the object travel in this time interval is v ( t ) ∆ t . Now we
only need to figure out a way to add these small distances together to get the total
distance. However, it will be a continuous sum of infinitely many infinitesimal (small)
quantities v ( t ) ∆ t rather than a regular sum of discrete terms. The sum is what we call
integral:
b

∫ v (t ) dt=∆lim
t →0
∑ v (t i)∆ t where i is the subinterval index and t i is some number in the ith
a i
subinterval of size ∆ t of [a , b].

In some sense:

INTEGRAL = A CONTINUOUS VERSION OF SUMMATION

Q3. What does the sum on the left of the equation above approach?

Q4. Recall other the other problems listed at the beginning of the worksheet to see if we
really need to have a form of continuous summation.

Further Reading in Thomas’ Calculus ET 14th edition

 Integrals: Section 5.1

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